Panel Discussion: Is Anybody Out There?
“Is Anybody Out There?” – A panel discussion on the search for extraterrestrial life’
Date & Location: 7:00 PM-8:30 PM Mar. 7, Sidney Smith Hall (SS), Room 2102, 100 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5S 3G3
Abstract: Come ask our diverse panel of five PhD students any of your burning questions about the current (and future) search for extraterrestrial life! This event will be run as a guided discussion, with a host/moderator posing a variety of general questions to the panel, however you (the audience) are encouraged to bring your own questions! Some of the topics that will be covered are:
– Current search efforts and how they are performed (ie. SETI)
– The instruments that are used in the current search efforts
– Future space missions dedicated to searching for life
– The conditions required for life to arise on a given planet, and whether life can form under a different set of conditions
– Prime exoplanet candidates on which to search for life
– The possibility of life in our own solar neighbourhood (ie. on Mars or Enceladus)
– And more! (depending on the pacing of discussion)
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About the host/moderator: Dan Falk is an award-winning science writer, author and broadcaster, and was a 2011/12 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. He and has written articles for New Scientist, The Toronto Star and The Globe & Mail (among many others). He has written quite extensively on the search for extraterrestrial life in the past, and we are excited to have him as a host and moderator for this panel discussion!
About the panelists:
– Elliot Meyer is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto who’s primary research interests include astronomical instrumentation and extragalactic stellar populations. Back in 2015, he worked alongside Prof. Shelley Wright at the Dunlap Institute on the construction of the instrument for the Near-Infrared Optical SETI (NIROSETI) and the development of their search strategy. Their instrument achieved first light on March 14th, 2015.
– Adiv Paradise is a PhD candidate in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at UofT working with Prof. Kristen Menou. Much of his research focuses on using general circulation climate models (GCM’s) to simulate and assess the habitability of exoplanets, and to determine how to best observe these exoplanet candidates.
– Yvette Cendes is a PhD candidate with the Dunlap Institute at the University of Toronto. She is primarily a radio-astronomer and her thesis focuses on transient radio sources (those which occur very briefly and rapidly). In addition to this, she has spent a summer interning at SETI, as well as she is an avid science writer and blogger, and has written articles for magazines such as Astronomy, Discover and Sky & Telescope.
– Ben Pearce is a PhD student at McMaster University working alongside Prof. Ralph Pudritz. His research is centered around the biochemistry of how the building blocks of life (more specifically RNA) were formed on the early Earth, prior to even the most primordial lifeforms. In addition to his research, he is involved with The Origins Institute at McMaster, a trans-disciplinary organization aimed at answering some of the biggest questions in science such as “how did the universe begin?” and “how did life arise on Earth?”
– Margot Smith is a PhD candidate at McMaster University, and her work primarily focuses on studying the microbiology of deep continental subsurface microbial communities using multiple membrane biomarkers. Her research has various implications in astrobiology, and she is also involved with The Origins Institute at McMaster.